The police station receded in the rearview mirror as Davis turned the corner. Bolan’s parcel was in the trunk; the Stony Man Farm courier had not failed him. Davis had suggested that Bolan take the opportunity to get some rest. He was driving the soldier to the hotel he hadn’t yet had a chance to check into, where the soldier could get some sleep, a shower, or both while Davis returned to the department to monitor police surveillance and readiness channels. When something broke, Davis had promised, they could immediately respond to it. Bolan, who had been on the move without sleep more or less straight off the plane to Detroit, saw the wisdom in taking downtime when there were no other options.
Bolan looked out his window.
The white panel van struck the Ford with bone-crushing force. Safety glass disintegrated into a shower of rock-hard pebbles. The Ford spun in a 180 degree arc, coming to rest against the curb, its flank crushed and its rear driver’s-side wheel flattened.
Gunmen boiled from the van, like angry hornets pouring from a nest. Some wore security guard uniforms, while others wore street clothes. They were approaching the passenger side of the car when the door flew open and an avenging Bolan fired into their midst.
The Executioner charged from the car with a gun in each hand. The .44 Magnum Desert Eagle roared; the Beretta 93-R coughed its deadly triple-rhythm. Shells hit the pavement. In a heartbeat, the men closest to the Ford fell to the pavement.
Bolan knew that to survive against overwhelming odds like these required movement. He stayed in a crouch and glide-stepped around the corner of the van, shooting as he went. He shot a man in the face, got another in the neck. And still another, partially concealed by the van, he dropped and shot in the kneecap. When the gunman screamed and fell from behind the vehicle, Bolan drilled him through the heart with a single .44 Magnum round.
The Executioner was willing to run the risk of seeking the high ground, for above the fray he would have a great field of fire but also make a tempting target. Holstering the Desert Eagle, he grabbed the mirror extending from the rear corner of the van on an A-strut. Using this, he pulled himself to the roof of the van, then flatted himself against it.
The gunmen shooting at him would have his range in only seconds. He drew his Desert Eagle once more, extended his arms as if he thought he could fly and began shooting from the roof of the van. The fusillade pinned the gunmen nearest to the van, striking and wounding some of them, killing still others.
Bolan saw Chamblis moving among a knot of men farther down the street. There were more assassins than the soldier had realized. Apparently Reginald Chamblis himself was leading the charge; it was most likely a last-ditch revenge play, for Chamblis’s public identity was blown here in Detroit. He would not be able to return to the country, much less the city, if he managed to get away, but obviously he had something besides escape on his mind in mounting this assault.
Bolan felt the van shake beneath him. There were men climbing back inside. They would try to shoot him through the roof.
He beat them to it. Holstering the Beretta and swapping magazines in the Desert Eagle, he held the triangular snout of the handcannon above the roof of the van and started pulling the trigger, walking the shots in an ever-wider pattern. Men screamed below him. Bodies hit the floor of the cargo van.
Civilian traffic had stopped on this part of the street. The drivers of the nearest cars had fled their vehicles, leaving them where they idled. These formed an effective roadblock, stopping other civilians from blundering into the firefight. Any pedestrians on the street had fled. Bolan was grateful there were no innocents caught in the cross fire.
Chamblis was sending a wave of reinforcements. Bolan flattened himself again and spun, shooting left and right, taking running gunmen this way and that. Bullets sparked and ricocheted from the corner of the van’s roof.
It was time to move. He could not let them bracket him and then take shots at will. Shoving off with his hands, he dropped behind the van, careful to avoid bullets from below should anyone be trying for a belly shot while crouching beneath the vehicle. His combat boots kicked empty brass and left bloody footprints on the asphalt.
He took up a position behind the engine block of the Ford. He could not, at first, identify Davis’s position. He finally saw that the detective had been forced into a corner at the stairs leading to a nearby building. The stone facade of the structure proclaimed it a multistory retail and office space; there were signs advertising vacancy and availability.
Davis was outgunned. He was taking automatic weapons fire and had been reduced simply to hunkering down and riding out the storm. Bolan took a two-handed grip on the Desert Eagle. From his flanking position he had a great shot at the gunmen, who were not aware of him for the moment.
He fired. The .44 Magnum hollowpoint round splattered the brains of one of the lead shooters, causing the others to look around for the forgotten threat. Bolan shot a second man and a third. The gunmen then focused on him again and he backed down behind the Ford, feeling the vehicle vibrate as it absorbed multiple rounds. He was careful to keep the engine block between him and the enemy.
Bolan surged from cover again, running across the street, drawing fire as he sprinted. He was trying to reach Davis, help shoot the detective out of the mess he was in. Together they could focus their fire, drive a wedge through the enemy that they could use as an avenue of escape.
Another white panel van roared up the street, pushing aside parked vehicles, crushing its own grille against the rear bumper of an ancient Chevy Nova as it moved. The van interposed itself between Bolan and Davis. A shooter in the passenger seat pushed the barrel of a Glock 18 machine pistol from the window and emptied its 33-round magazine at Bolan.
The Executioner hit the ground. The blast burned the air above him. He fired through the door of the van, his .44 slugs finding their mark. The man with the Glock 18 died where he sat.
The driver had a sawed-off shotgun and was jumping out to meet him, as more men emerged from the sliding door. Bolan shot one of them and then the Desert Eagle was empty. He yanked the Beretta free, and the weapon spit 9 mm death through the van’s doorway, chopping down enemy shooters like trees.
The shotgunner leveled his weapon and triggered a slug that punched a quarter-size hole in the fender of the nearby Ford. Bolan put a 9 mm hole through the man’s forehead in answer.
“Cooper,” Davis said over the earbud link, “I’ve got real trouble here. I’m out of ammunition.”
“Stay where you are,” Bolan said. “I’ll fight my way to you.”
“Uh-oh,” Davis said.
Bolan could hear the roar of a vehicle. Behind the van nearest him, a third cargo van was closing on Davis’s location. Through the earbud link, Bolan could hear the background noise of a van door sliding open. He heard men yelling, then Davis’s grunts of protest.
“Get off me!” Davis shouted. The detective was smart enough not to speak directly to Bolan, not to give away that he had a means of communicating with his ally. Bolan came around the van and began shooting at the third vehicle, going for the tires, but the van was already moving and the cars between Bolan and the van stopped the soldier from getting a clear shot at the wheels.
Davis was gone. They had him.
“Dammit,” Bolan said. He shot a man in the face.
There were more gunners operating in his vicinity, but they were cagier. Apparently Chamblis had left them behind to perform a holding action. He doubted these men understood they had essentially been sacrificed to cover Chamblis’s escape.
His phone began to vibrate. He stabbed the hands-free button, sending the call to his earbud and cutting the signal from Davis’s transmitter. There was nothing he could do for Davis until he eliminated the shooters trying to kill him here.
He began weaving among the abandoned vehicles, his Beretta punching 9 mm hollowpoint rounds through man after man.
“Go,” Bolan said aloud.
“We’ve just gotten word through channels,” Price said in his ear. “Hal’s tried to— Striker, was that a shot?”
The earbud’s automatic sound-leveling and heuristics algorithms adjusted the earpiece volume and its microphone gain based on external noise. What Price would be hearing would be the occasional flat, static-laden dead zone that was the earbud cutting out to protect both her and Bolan from the sound of a gunshot nearby.
“Yes,” Bolan said. “Barb, I’ve just lost Detective Davis. He’s been abducted by the enemy, a kill team led by Reginald Chamblis.”
“So Chamblis is definitely behind it.”
“Between your files and my intel,” Bolan said, pausing to shoot a man in the throat, “we have enough to put together a video package. I’ll dictate as I drive. Hang on, I have to find a car to drive.”
Price said nothing. Bolan picked an abandoned Toyota sedan near the outside of the cluster of abandoned cars and trucks. He would dictate the registration to the Farm so they could see to it the driver was compensated. But at the moment, there were more pressing concerns. A gunman tried to sneak up on him as he climbed into the vehicle, using the other cars for concealment, but Bolan saw him in the mirror. He pointed the Beretta behind his own body and fired without turning his head. The man went down. That, the Executioner believed, was the last of them. The car was already running; he shifted and hit the gas, pulling out onto the sidewalk to clear the impromptu traffic jam.
“All right,” Bolan said. “Have Aaron and his people transcribe what I’m about to tell you. Cross-reference that with the data we have. Davis has bulletins out on Chamblis and Patrick Farnham. I have reason to believe Farnham went rogue, killing civilians at random rather than biding his time and striking at the fringes. Apparently Chamblis is the leader of a death cult of knife murderers, who have been offing street people and other fringe victims for years. They’ve been doing so with help from within the Detroit police, including a Detective Slate, now deceased, and a Detective Bill Griffith, now in custody. The rest of what you need should be obvious in the files you’ve got based on Chamblis’s holdings and the address we got from Slovic. Slovic was a member of the cult, apparently. They tried to hide his death in order to prevent us uncovering Chamblis’s dueling studio.”
“All right, Striker. I think that’s everything we need.”
“Except whether there’s a heroic, dead cop involved.” Bolan took his phone from his pocket and selected an application. “I’m going to hang up on you, Barb. I’ve got to concentrate on following Davis.”
“Why do you think they took him?”
“If I were Chamblis,” Bolan said, “I’d want to know just how much the other side knows.”
“If he’s watching the news tonight,” Price said, “that won’t be a secret. His involvement will be blown wide.”
“If he’s smart, he’ll get out of town before that happens, just on the possibility that it’s coming down,” Bolan said. “But this revenge play isn’t smart, so we don’t know that. He’ll go somewhere to build a fire under Davis. I’ve got until the news breaks to get the kid back. They’ll kill him either way. Depending on how badly they cut him up to question him, he may not survive even if he lives through it. If you follow me.”
“You think they will?”
“Chamblis is cracked,” Bolan said. “He’d have to be. We’ve already seen what happens when one of these knifers goes off the rails.”
“Hurry, Striker.”
“On it. Out.”
Bolan kept one eye on the traffic and the other on his phone. The application booted and loaded for him a map of the area taken from satellite data. Superimposed on this map was a blinking amber dot.
That dot was Adam Davis.
Bolan put his foot down on the accelerator. “Hold on, kid,” he said quietly. “The cavalry’s coming.”